Mother sat in front of her Circassian walnut dressing table, her f--,
no, PLUMP form enveloped in a lavender and green, chrysanthemum-
covered, stork-bordered kimono, and surveyed herself in the glass.
Mother was Mrs. Henry Y. Mason, and in Springtown, Nebraska, when
one says "Henry Y." it conveys, proportionately, the same
significance that it carries when the rest of the world says "John
D."
It was eleven o'clock at night, which is late for Springtown.
Mother had set her bread before climbing, rather pantingly, the
wide mahogany stairs. There is something symbolical in that
statement, illustrative of Mother's life. She had been promoted to
a mahogany stairway, but she had clung to her own bread making.
Three diamond rings just removed from Mother's plump hand lay on
the Cluny-edged cover of the dressing table. These represented
epochs in the family life. The modest little diamond stood for the
day that Henry left bookkeeping behind and became assistant
cashier. The middle-sized diamond belonged to his cashier days.
The big, bold diamond was Henry Y. as president of the First
National Bank of Springtown.
Mother was tired and nervous to-night. She felt irritable, old,
and grieved--all of which was utterly foreign to her usual sunny
disposition.
She took off the glasses that covered her blue eyes. It was just
her luck, she thought crossly, that she couldn't even wear
eyeglasses. They simply would not stay on her nose. Deprecatingly
she wrinkled that fat, broad member. Then she removed and laid on
the table a thick, grayish braid of silky hair that had formed her
very good-looking coiffure, and let down a limited, not to say
scant, amount of locks that were fastened on as Nature--then
evidently in parsimonious mood--had intended.
With apparent disgust she leaned forward under the lights that
glowed rosily from their Dresden holders and scanned the features
which looked back at her from the clear, oh, VERY clear, beveled
glass. She might have seen that her skin was as fair and soft and
pink as a girl's, that her mouth and eyes showed deep-seated humor,
that her face radiated character. But in her unusual mood of
introspection she could find nothing but flaws. The eyes looked
weak and nearsighted without their glasses. The chin--like a two-
part story, that chin gave every evidence of stopping, and then to
one's surprise went merrily on. She leaned closer to the glass.
"Well," Mother said dryly, reaching for manicure scissors, "that is
THE LIMIT!" Living with a houseful of young people as she did,
Mother's English had in no way been neglected.
Then, as though to let Fate do its worst, and looking cautiously
around--for she was very sensitive about it--Mother took from her
mouth a lower plate of artificial teeth. Immediately, out of
obedience to nature's law that there shall be no vacuum, her soft
lower lip rushed in to fill the void.
"Pretty creature, am I not?" she grumbled.
Just at this point, we opine, every one will say, "Ah! No doubt
the president of the First National Bank is showing symptoms of
being attracted elsewhere!" Not so. Mother had only to turn her
plump self around to see the long figure of that highly efficient
financier stretched out in its black-and-white-checked tennis-
flannel nightgown, sleeping the sleep of the model citizen and
father.
